During the Los Angeles Lakers‘ first game back in the Staples Center since Kobe Bryant‘s death last week, the team made several tributes to the late basketball legend as well as his daughter, Gianna, and the other seven victims in the helicopter crash. One of those tributes was revealed by photographs that show Gianna’s basketball teammates sitting courtside during the team’s emotional tribute.
While players warmed up wearing shirts with Kobe’s numbers 8 and 24 on them, Gianna’s teammates sat in courtside seats. Gianna played on the girls basketball team coached by her dad at his Mamba Sports Academy facility. Gianna’s teammates, dressed mostly in black, sat in the front row.
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Elsewhere throughout the night, the Lakers honored Kobe, 41, and Gianna, 13, by draping Lakers jerseys bearing the numbers 24 and 2 over two chairs that Kobe and Gianna recently sat in at a Lakers game. Ahead of the game — which the Lakers ultimately lost to the Portland Trail Blazers — Usher and Boyz II Men paid musical tributes, with Usher singing a haunting rendition of “Amazing Grace” and Boyz II Men singing a perfectly harmonized a capella National Anthem. The team also played a tribute video dedicated to Kobe and the other victims of the crash, narrated by Los Angeles Clippers player Paul George and accompanied live by cellist Ben Hong.
The stadium’s 20,000 seats were filled with grieving fans wearing Bryant tribute jerseys passed out by the team as LeBron James gave a speech, which he gave from the heart after revealing he initially planned on reading from a written script.
“Now, I got something written down,” James began, “but Lakers Nation, I would be selling y’all short if I read off this s— so I’m going to go from the heart.”
He first spoke about family. “When you’re going through something like this the best thing you can do is lean on the shoulders of your family,” he said. “I heard about the Lakers Nation and how much of a family it is and that is absolutely what I’ve seen this week. Not only from the players, not only from the coaching staff, not only from the league, but from everybody.”
“Everybody’s that here… this is really, truly, a family. I know Kobe, Gianna, Vanessa and everybody thanks you guys from the bottom of their hearts.”
He went on to speak of Kobe, “who came here at 18 years of age, retired at 38 and became probably the best dad we’ve seen over the last three years,” James said.
“Kobe is a brother to me and from the time I was in high school, watching him from afar, to when I joined this league and watched him up close. All the battles we’ve had throughout my career … the one thing we always shared was the determination to win and be great,” he said.
“So in the words of Kobe Bryant, ‘Mamba out,’ but in the words of us, not forgotten.”
